Metal recycling facts
Metal packaging recycling: Facts
Food and drink cans
- The average household uses 600 food cans and 380 drinks cans each year – each one is endlessly recyclable, over and over again into any type of metal product: from a paper clip to a car engine component, an iron to a washing machine – or another food or drinks can.
- The drinks can is the world’s most recycled packaging container.
- The empty drinks can you recycle could be back on sale in just 60 days.
Foil trays
- An estimated 16,000 tonnes of foil containers are used each year for packaging products like ready meals, pies and quiches and take aways.
- The average household uses 182 foil trays each year.
Household Foil
- Households in the UK use an average of 12 metres of aluminium foil per month
- Every year 57 million packs of household foil are bought in the UK
Aerosols
- 580 million aerosols are used in the UK every year.
- The average household uses 27 aerosols each year.
Aluminium and steel recycling
- Recycling a tonne of steel saves 1.5 tonnes of iron ore and reduces CO2 emissions by 80%, compared to making the metal from raw materials.
- Recycling a tonne of aluminium saves 9 tonnes of C02 emissions (1 tonne of CO₂ is equivalent to driving nearly 3,000 miles) and 4 tonnes of bauxite – the raw material from which aluminium is made.